I’m worried about our teens. Not because of drugs or naughty music or even the state of the economy. No, I’m worried that many of them won’t make it through this coming weekend, reduced to messy puddles of tears and feelings as they will be by the new Y.A. weepie The Fault in Our Stars. Based on John Green’s smash hit novel, TFIOS, as it’s commonly referred to on the Internet, is pitched nearly perfectly in a frequency that many of us can detect, but that particularly sends certain young people into hysterical fits. Meaning, this hugely anticipated movie does exactly the job it’s meant to do. It’s good news for all involved, but I fear many of your daughters, and no doubt some of your sons, are pretty much doomed.

Directed with wit and low-key grace by Josh Boone, TFIOS tells us the sad, sweet story of Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), a sixteen-year-old Indiana girl who is dying of thyroid and lung cancer. With her post-chemo short hairdo and trusty oxygen tank by her side, we know that Hazel is sick. But because this is a Hollywood movie, she also has a radiance about her that reads as anything but death’s looming specter. That’s partly owed to the movie’s aesthetic, all soft, warm tones, but it’s also because Hazel is played by Woodley, who glows like a California sunset, and seems so good of spirit that she’s like some otherworldly immortal. She’s not badly cast, in fact she’s often very good in the film, but her innate shine is an important reminder that TFIOS isn’t really interested in showing us the true ugliness of death and dying.

Which is O.K. Neither was Love Story, or A Walk to Remember, or any of the myriad other tearjerkers that play out in the same fashion. What the film lacks in grave seriousness it makes up for with its sappy, but rarely treacly, charms. Wanting to get her concerned mother (Laura Dern, wise and wonderful as ever) off her back, Hazel agrees to go to a teens-with-cancer support group at a local church. (The exaggerated Jesus-iness of the support group and its leader is one of Green’s, and the film’s, clumsiest and least nuanced jokes.) It’s there, one fateful day, that she meets Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), a handsome 18-year-old who was a basketball jock (but a thoughtful one!) before he lost his right leg to cancer. They have an immediate spark, he cocky-cute, she shy but sharp, and soon we’re swooning along with them as they tumble into a doomed romance.

That’s no spoiler. Of course it was always doomed. Someone’s gotta die in this kind of three-hanky thing, and while it’s almost immediately apparent who it’s going to be (even if you haven’t read the book, which, yes, I have), TFIOS rather remarkably doesn’t feel programmatic or tediously inevitable. The movie is, instead, funny and touching and brimming with youthful life, filled with a brightness and a piquancy that’s well channeled through Woodley and guided smartly by Boone. As Augustus and Hazel grow closer, they embark on a quest to find out what happens after the ending of Hazel’s favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, written by an ornery recluse named Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe). Their journey takes them to Amsterdam, where they enjoy a wistful, romantic weekend before things get sad again. That’s pretty much it in terms of the movie’s plot, which has been judiciously pared down from the book, while still paying loyal homage to readers’ favorite moments.

The real story here, though, is of course about Hazel and Augustus falling in love and grappling with how limited their time on this lonely Earth may be. And Woodley and Elgort fall in love beautifully, possessed of a lively, natural rapport that is rare among actors their age. Though, they have strangely opposite shortcomings. Woodley excels at the dramatic heavy lifting, but can be a little awkward when doling out Green’s jaunty, stilted upbeat dialogue, while Elgort is all winning grins and easy charm when he’s being flirty, deftly maneuvering Green’s occasionally irksome, Kevin Williamson-y torrents of affected teen speak. But he loses much of his sincerity when the moment turns serious. The two are best, then, in the middle, while Hazel frets, and Gus, noble lad, tries to cheer her up. Elgort could be called too charming by half—he’s so aware of his boyish appeal that it borders on creepily performative by the end—but Woodley’s tempering influence keeps his plucky hearthrobbiness from becoming too slick and robotic.

Plus, who cares, right? Are Augustus and Hazel the cutest couple in the whole wide world? For the time being, they sure are. Does the movie elicit blubbery tears in a way that’s both sloppily big-hearted and almost cruelly precise? Yep, it most certainly does. So much so that I am genuinely nervous about what is going to happen in movie theaters across the nation come Friday. Maybe not since Titanic has a movie threatened to so thoroughly burrow itself into young hearts only to beautifully break them by the end credits. (Or, really, about a half an hour before the end credits.) Look out for a mighty deluge of teen tears flooding multiplexes this weekend, which will be well-earned by this clever, attractive, sad little movie.